Massie Creek Flute Circle

This morning the Massie Creek Flute Circle met in my studio.  We have been meeting since last June.  Actually, I am not positive when we started, but I know our meetings were held on the porch of the studio all summer.

We have been meeting on the first Sunday of every month.  Our average number of people all summer was maybe five.  I loved the ease of this little group that gathered and played and talked and played and laughed.  The mornings always went quickly.

Today we met on the first Saturday of the month.  The change was due to a conflict with the Sunday meeting.  It turned out to be a great change.  The studio was packed full with fourteen Fluties.  I consider my job in all of this is to clean the studio and have enough chairs for every one to sit.  I don't usually have a plan, things just seem to evolve.  For instance:  My dear friend Linda and I were playing flutes together last week and discovered that the flute we were playing sounded like a particular animal or bird, I don't remember exactly.  The inspiration was to write down things that make noise (birds, animals, wind, rain and so on) on a card and have each person draw a card and then try to make that sound on their flute.  The idea behind this technique is to use embellishments to make your flute music more interesting.  It was so fun listening to leaves fall, butterflies dance, a mourning dove coo, or a dog bark.  Besides the interesting music each played, there was also lots of laughter.

During another meeting we used our flutes to ask our neighbor a question and the neighbor answers  the question on their flute. Some conversations are very abrupt and insistent!   This is not my idea, our flute circle leader in Columbus used this idea at her circle.  We also will play to some music on Cd's designed to be back up music for a flute player.  It is always amazing how the same background music will inspire each flute player to play their own song, no two songs are ever alike.  This music is coming from the players heart.

At the end of each Massie Creek Flute Circle we do a little work on keeping the beat.  I am very challenged in this area, but have seen some progress as we continue to practice this technique.  We gather around the big pow wow drum and a beat is set, we then take turns playing our flutes to the drum beat.  Bells, rattles and shakers are all used to accompany the drum.  We have had as many as eight people around the drum at one time.  It is a wonderful ending to our flute circle, although this can take quite awhile to actually end.  Everyone seems to love the drum.

I love our flute circle, I didn't want to see the morning end, it was just too much fun.